It is two separate operations, but in many other languages the compiler is smart enough to figure out that they'll be the same type (and allow you to specify it when they're not)

That's what I mean—Java's type system is verbose and clumsy, because it doesn't bother trying to figure out things it could figure out, forcing the programmer to be redundant and repeat themselves all over the place. The fact that it's 2 separate operations to the compiler shouldn't dictate anything about the language.

I agree it could be more clean, but the way it is designed allows for immediately understandable semantics when dealing with inherited types (which everyone though was the future during Java's Formative years).

This makes operations like this intuitive:

    Animal results = new Dog("Lassie");

It does, but they should have found a solution which allowed that, as well as not be redundant in the more common case where the two classes are the same. Hence Java's type system being verbose and clumsy.